GSM standard has flaw that allows crooks to take over phones

The GSM standard is widely used on mobile phones of all kinds depending on the carrier you are on. A security researcher is claiming that a flaw in the GSM standard has been discovered that could be exploited by criminals and hackers to give them control of the device. Once that control was going that hacker could force the phone to make calls or send text messages.

Reuters reports that GSM standards are used on 80% of the mobile phones on the market today meaning billions of mobile phone users could be open to the attack. This sort of attack has been carried out before and was targeted to specific devices. The difference here is the number of devices open to the attack.

Karsten Nohl, the head of Germany’s Security Research labs said that the new flaw would allow a nefarious sort to attack hundreds of thousands of phones in a short time frame. The attack would allow hoards of calls to be placed to premium numbers racking up potentially huge money for the hacker. Thankfully, Nohl won’t be offering details on the hack at the conference.